Facebook addiction increases depression severity among already depressed people
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Facebook really has little to do with this... if it wasnt facebook, it would be youtube, instagram, watching tv, or sleeping all day.
These people are depressed... they need help to improve their condition. Taking away facebook will not make them un-depressed. Thats not how depression works.
Although I agree that Facebook isn't the problem here, taking it away might be a necessary first step.
Is the question: which of these is not like the rest?
Furthermore, you deny two things: firstly, that the influence of facebook is real, and secondly, that other forms of (social) media can have a different effect. E.g., RSS is totally unlike facebook. And let's ignore you mentioned food.
> completely disgusted about what I've done
Sorry to hear that. I sometimes eat out of boredom/anxiety too; it's almost unavoidable. Don't feel too bad. It helps me to simply not buy the things I like. You do have to do your shopping every day, though.
But remember: this internet stranger isn't disgusted by you.
Something I do to block Reddit addiction is delete the app, log in through a private window (so I have to retype my password). Sometimes I also use a time limit.
…or you could end up doing something to improve your situation, like taking a walk outside or going to the gym. It’s kinda like saying vapes aren’t a problem because you would just get a cigarette.
I hate Facebook as much as the next guy, but in this case, singling it out like this is neither fair nor helpful. Just like shutting down Budweiser would do nothing to reduce alcoholism.
Facebook provides a temptation.
Like a table full of cookies over the holidays. Of course you are going to visit that table a hundred times a day. Even though it isn't really very healthy. And then when the holidays are over your diet will improve.
We are not Nietzschean creatures of pure will. The temptation-landscape significates.
How does that ancient Christian prayer go? ...Lead me not into temptation...
What did Satan do to Jesus when he was fasting? He zapped Jesus with lightning? No, he tempted him.
What did Mara do to Buddha...
Finding: Facebook makes already depressed people more depressed -> Claim: Facebook makes undepressed people depressed. The 2nd is not claimed, the first is the result and I think facebook has a lot of do with this.
Why is that? Youtube spreads misinformation too, most recently about election if I recall correctly. I mean hell, there are subreddits that full on organize crime / hate speech, all of them are just as bad, however facebook, every single time, always gets the active hate. I guess this is why PR is an industry, yes I just now realize this as I type the whole thing haha.
Clinical addictions generally imply more use than originally intended, some type of inability to quit, and some type of "significant impact" on school/work/relationships/goals.
These are known risk factors for developing depression, and of course worsening it. More studies are good, but from a news perspective, "addiction increases depression severity" is hardly surprising regardless of what the addiction is.
"Facebook addiction increases depression" - so yes it does. However, I think we need more companies like FourHere, Humane, etc. that want to fix the harm that social media causes.
The main result was that the noise was turned down. As a consequence I could listen to myself better.
I feel the same way about following news and really all ad-enabled content. The point is to increase viewership of advertisements. Really the only reliable way to increase engagement is to create something eye-catching (tiktok) or controversy (news).
The genius in FB is that for a long time it crowd sourced optimizing engagement to users. People just ended up posting things that would rile people up and get them to be on FB longer. In this sense people were the product to other people.
Endlessly clicking through content, viewing ads, and bumping engagement numbers up.
Ergo, any systemic effort to boost engagement will eventually encourage actions with the end result of "Make more people depressed, so they consume more Facebook."
It's a crime that we don't regulate engagement methods at a government level. We should have started with anything targeted at children, but ultimately established some rules of the road for adults too.
That's time enough for them to skew their userbase's behavior if they could. And given the amount of money they've thrown at staff, I wouldn't bet against them having shifted it in their favor.
Most recommend to start exercising. Easiest way to do this is to simply say I'm the kind of person that runs / bikes / works out (don't give yourself the option to decide). Simply say on Saturday's I do a run (rain or shine), then say Tuesday's and Saturdays, etc. In no time you're doing it 3+ times a week.
From one good habit others will follow, since you'll have learned how to stay consistent.
I enjoy reading the news and then discussing it with friends that are also news readers. That's the hobby aspect for me (and aforementioned friends). Together we try to predict what will happen in the world (wars, inflation, energy transition, stock market, ...) and quite often at least one of us is completely right or spectacularly wrong, which makes it fun for us.
I know it's not very useful but I enjoy it and it doesn't make me depressed or angry. Just let me have my fun.
I stopped consuming "news" i.e. CBC, CNN, Guardian, and the likes two months ago and I feel objectively happier and spend less time endlessly refreshing the page. I read the occasional in depth article because I feel like it doesn't have quite the same effect.
Sports and TV can work too.
Social media is for presenting the highlights of your life. For a lot of depressed or even just gullible people it is easy to generalize from that. I have acquaintances who blew up their personal lives in a search for that elusive "perfect life".
Is this in the typical sense of spending beyond their means, or do you have other anecdotes?
I am a highly compensated tech worker at a FAANG who overcame US immigration and other challenges to get here, and many people would trade their spot with mine.
Yet, I am so unhappy and burned out by work that I don’t think about anything else than quitting and moving back to my parents’ countryside house and enjoying a life of peace and quiet with the savings I have amassed, with no work pressure and rat race, just long hikes in nature, naps, reading and programming for fun.
I changed roles and companies and the feeling never went away. I think in January I’ll finally start therapy, I’ve been unhappy for so long that I’m worried this might just be “my ride” for the rest of my life, if I don’t do something about it.
Despite this unhappiness, I’ve never been able to quit because of that inner voice: “are you out of your stupid mind?! You’re just 35 and are making 7 figures, stop whining you privileged fool and make hay while it lasts, people would risk their physical safety in a mine for that salary”.
I’m wondering if this voice is the voice of reason while my wants are just another instance of “blowing up my life” because I see how happy other people are.
As to the voice in your head and the wants you're identifying, it sounds like you don't necessarily want to quit, or that you even want an idyllic rustic lifestyle. But more so that you wanna address where the feeling of being burnt-out and stuck is coming from. Like... I'm just a rando/ stranger from the internet, so take what I say with a grain of salt (and why a counselor will be way better to talk to than me and others here on this forum), but it seems like you want escape/ relief from your current life (in the form of just feeling peace that kinda looks like spending time outdoors), but there's a real pressure and possibly fear of feeling like if you seek this kinda peace, you are sabotaging yourself in the form of undoing all that you worked hard for, which translates to money, career, etc.
Just to give some perspective, it's possible to have a career while having a deep, settled feeling of peace in the core of who you are. This isn't easy. And it won't look the same for everyone. But it doesn't necessarily have to be an either-or thing.
But I get the sense it's going to be a longer journey – if not life-long in some sense – to find and maintain this sense of deep peace. It's not necessarily like a pill you pop or a light switch you turn on that changes everything in an instant, but a slow discovery that dawns upon you. I don't mean to sound so woo-woo, but just wanted to provide some perspective.
I’ve been basically living all my adult life like a frugal college student so that I could amass millions of dollars to get out of the rat race. However, it seems like the burnout is getting so bad that I might not be able to continue with this accumulation strategy.
At the core of it is (1) my inability to effectively deal with work pressure (2) a strong sense of impostor syndrome, which FAANG makes it even worse (3) my extremely introvert personality, being in a senior technical position at work I have to constantly interact with other people and I hate every minute of it, despite still doing it.
My ideal life is one where I have enough passive income to keep me afloat in perpetuity (working on it), and spend my time trying to build low-pressure solo online businesses that allow me to cultivate programming at my own pace without having to talk to other people except my family. Even just writing it out sounds idyllic.
On the other hand, perhaps living such a frugal lifestyle is contributing to your burnout. Not suggesting you need to throw all caution to the wind but taking some vacations/travels, or working with an interior designer to have a really nice welcoming place to come home to could make a difference.
After a few years of "drifting", failing to find anything close to what they had before, I lost contact with those people so not sure where they ended up. I sometimes stumble on the blog of one of them and it looks like they're still searching, years and years later.
So in some sense this was worse than spending too much. Money is fungible and you can make it up eventually, particularly if you have good people around you. Good people are not fungible and getting them back is a lot harder, sometimes next to impossible.
Plenty of people are in long term relationships they can't stand for way too long, or careers, etc. I'm sure social media often plays a role but some relationships / jobs are just bad regardless of whether or not the grass is Instagram Green or not.
I'm sure social media can create, maintain, or accentuate a lot of different types of "pathologies" because it was designed to do so.
Social media is just pure individualistic ego-stroking by comparison. The message is “my life is better than yours”.
But years ago she quit.
I hear about Meta and that they own WhatsApp and I see people using WhatsApp.
But FaceBook: among my friends and family who used to post there, nobody ever posts anything. I don't doubt many are still logged in by default because they haven't updated their computer in years but they simply do not posts anything anymore, don't use if to message people (they use WhatsApp or Telegram instead) and don't check their feed.
And most of all: people don't ever talk about FaceBook at parties anymore. Since a long time. It used be a thing: people would ask if you were on FB or tell you about this or that person that posted this or that thing on FB. People don't do that anymore.
I don't understand where FB's MAU numbers do come from: in my (non tech) circle FB is simply already dead.
TikTok is the only that I can think of that will try to bring attention to you constantly scrolling and suggest healthy things to do instead.
I think Netflix did something similarly back in the day too and the memes about Netflix knowing you're depressed.
I'm honestly surprised there isn't some kind of moderation from these apps or settings that help you combat addiction across all experiences(mobile/desktop/web/etc), especially when you're depressed. The first thing you might do when battling addiction is remove the apps and only access through a browser. Sadly, that's where all this functionality is built into:
https://www.facebook.com/help/1737706169659354
Instead you have to go nuclear and restrain yourself at the device or internet level instead.
HN addiction increases depression severity among already depressed developers because of all the fancy cool new stuffs others are playing around while they are stuck with outdated tech stack in day jobs just for money.
And in certain slices of the globe there isn't even much of that! No risk of workaholism.
When i feel fine it’s easy for me to walk away from
I honestly felt a lot of pressure to join and be active. However, I never fully gave in, and it did me a lot of good, since most people who post on Facebook talk about the best highlights of their day or their life. When you see this, and you're having a bad day, it makes that day worse.
People have good days and bad days, but when you look at Facebook it seems as though everyone is having a blast _all the time_.
That said, if you actually want to understand why the platform is or was popular to begin with you have to go beyond just viewing it as a masochistic FOMO factory. That’s an angle that gets talked about a lot in the wider media but it really is only a part of the story, and IMO a lesser one in the grand scheme of things.
There’s certainly an element of curated bragging to be sure, but in my experience what really keeps people engaged isn’t the unsubtle boasting but the outright fighting. FB users will quite literally treat their friend list as a stand-in for the broader world and vent their rage accordingly. For every “check my sunny vacay” post there are like 5 more along the lines of “YOU STUPID LIBS/CONS ARE RUINING THE UNIVERSE AND HERE IS WHY…”
That animosity and the back and forth exchanges it fosters is the really dark secret sauce at the heart of the experiment. Hate will always generate attention with the quickness, and it easily trumps envy as an engagement driver.
Same thing works for Twitter - you can tune it pretty well by selecting "I'm not interested in this tweet" for all the crappy ones. After someone told me that, it took about a day before it stopped feeding me scam crypto trash.
I decided to drop my socials about 4 years ago. There will be periods here or there when I think “I have a handle on things; I can start using social media again.” Every single time, without fail, it begins a spiral of addiction and subsequent guilt that I have to crawl out of, yet again. It doesn’t matter how positive or negative my mental state is before re-opening the socials; the result is the same each time. The only good thing about it is that I’ve learned to recognize my pattern of addiction, and I’m better at breaking it after some practice.
This psychology-oriented design atrocity is leaking into other industries[0], and I can't see a future where this is not strongly regulated against like how gambling is today. It took me months of using screen time apps to revert the bad habits these apps try to implant on you.
I'm surprised you only took months. It's taken me years and I'm still battling it. I even wrote a book on this struggle last year given it was such a prominent addiction in my teens and early 20s. I'm 30 now.
The issue is that those companies know how much their products affect people in a negative way yet still make them, we would be shocked if it was some chemical company making medication but psychological health is as important as physical health adn they should be treated the same in my opinion.
>An idiot can download any game right now from the app store and see how similar the design is to slot machines, plus they give you limited gems/coins/etc. tu use on crateboxes each day, if you want more you have to pay
>gambling is addictive and bad for adults => gambling is probably also addictive and bad for kids
I mean I know you know what I'm talking about and you know I know you know, so why play the clueless shill on every thread and post? Has being the most obedient (in the sense one protects any authority with deception and faking stupidity) person in the room become something to strive towards now?
Also, the most successful gambling games I know all come with several other totally unrelated business lines, eg Fate/Grand Order contains the world’s best and longest ongoing fantasy novel and a series of theatrical movies. The pure gambling stuff is like B-grade apps for retirees.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07475...
TikTok/Instagram is full of people posting a glossy, edited lifestyle that makes your life feel bad by comparison.
Facebook/Twitter filled with more miserable people being miserable about one thing or another (politics/culture wars/news/etc) and allows you to spiral in misery.
Having spent a lot of time in addiction recovery spaces, addiction and depression have astoundingly high comorbidity, to the point where much of the time it's hard to tell where one begins and the other ends, which came first in a given person.
There probably are specifics of a social media addiction that are relevant to how it affects users in depression. But that's true of all addiction as well, they all have relevant specifics.
Facebook is the longest-running of our major social networks and the first one where most people really understood that something had fundamentally changed about the world because of it, so it is the most studied. And studies take time, so we have a larger body of research on it specifically. I can almost guarantee that similar findings will obtain about other social media platforms, regardless of their individual dynamics or character.
The solution is obviously not to replace digital drug A (Facebook) with another digital drug B (TikTok). The solution is to delete all of your social media accounts.
Or if it is not even connected to the social media aspect at all, and also applies to other addictive platforms like YouTube, that don't focus on the social media aspect a lot.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook...
Remember that people completely lost their shit and made Facebook promise not to do that again? Well, instead they just optimized for "engagement" and here we are.
It would be SOOO easy to make a social network that actually increases a global sense of joy, comfort, satisfaction, security, etc. Facebook already has all the users, so they'd be perfect to flip this switch if the general public would let them. Why is it that they get hounded for making people happy, but not when optimizing for addictive compulsive behavior? Are companies just expected to optimize for addiction due to profit margins, something something, yay capitalism? Why is every other optimization off limits?
Facebook already has a massive amount of global social manipulation capabilities. There's no way around that, and no way they can just turn that off. They have the users, and the users expect some form of curation. Maybe at least give users the option to flip on the happy switch? It's still all real news from their network, just slightly boosted towards positive posts. I feel like for them to even be neutral, they should be at least boosting positive posts by 4x due to Negativity Bias inherent in how our brains filter data.
A decade ago I used to think how difficult it would be to compete in this world when everyone around me was so smart at what they did. Fast forward, it has never been easier to progress as I see the matrix (sort of).
My experience with de-addiction: I left Facebook long ago(~10yrs), Instagram 1 yr ago, Twitter 1 month ago. No addictions now apart from reading hacker news once a day, TL;DR newsletter and morning brew at EoD.
I can not express in words how good life feels right now. There is just- no noise, absolute clarity and bliss - coupled with workout regime and balanced diet. I feel sad for my friends who can not get rid of those addictions and I know it’s difficult as I’ve experienced first hand. However, once you have left those apps and some time passes, there’s no going back. Instagram really is an addictive app but I have lost the urge to open it now in a year. In contrast, all I see wherever I go is people hooked to their phones and me staring at the utter cognitive chaos in the society today due to these petty apps that have actually disconnected the society the most ever. One should be mindful of what they put inside their body and into their brain as those are only things that stay with us till our last breath.
People have forgotten to enjoy reading fiction on a sunny day. Play with friends and family often. Throw surprises to each other.
Just last week I saw two diff posts on hacker news referencing these two beautiful articles which sum up what I feel:
1. Sam Altman: https://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades...
2. Paul Graham: http://paulgraham.com/vb.html
Good day!
What is this?
Everyone agrees smoking causes health problems, is costly and doesn't offer anything. Smoking is regulated (taxes, labels, etc), but cigarettes are readily available everywhere - gas stations, convenience stores, etc. You would imagine that something so universally recognized as detrimental would cease to exist (either outlaws or society would just abandon it completely), but it's more accessible than say clean water, healthy food and such.
My point is I don't think we will see this problem going away. As long as there is technology enabling this level of connectedness we will see the side-effect.
How can you say that? Have you ever smoked one after sex?
What about alcohol or binging Netflix shows or even sex itself? Life is all about tradeoffs. Tobacco has a place in the trillions of tradeoffs combinations that each human can generate with their own lives, and so does alcohol, Netflix and social media.
As with everything there are winners and losers. Some built careers and companies by leveraging social media. That's in the pros column.
When I drill down into it, I think the potency is what draws me in. I sometimes feel this way on HN. "Let me check the comments". But FB, reddit, et al. are high octane versions.
But as long as there is tech that connects people, you will see these effects. Regulation, moderation, etc are just nerfing the tech itself.
A perspective shift I try to apply to myself is to view these things are tools, rather than a part of my identity that I am strongly tied to. I've got a power drill, but I don't check it everyday.
I would not say ban, but maybe there is a middle ground that would allow less 'attention seeking' content to actually gain solid ground ( I know actually useful stuff is there if you are willing to pay ; it just does not always seem people are aware of it ).
The absurd part to me is know strong the industry is STILL. I think CVS is the only pharmacy that does not sell cigarettes, out of principle. Every other incentive tells merchants to sell cigarettes.
I kinda feel the same way about gambling. But I can do that with a poker game in my house. Tobacco needs an entire supply chain for someone to smoke. The fast that infrastructure is still profitable is kinda wild.
> costly
Cigarettes are really cheap in places that don't heavily tax them
> doesn't offer anything
Human brains like nicotine. It is mildly effective as a mood stabilizer. I think we both agree that the bad health effects are not worth it, but it's not accurate to say there's nothing on the other side of that equation.
That can seem like a nootropic (some definitions even explicitly include them) especially if you have anxiety.
The con of this is nicotine addiction.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, exercise and meditation all beat nicotine in effectiveness as anxiolytics and in strength of effect.
Not arguing for the use of nicotine, but there are reasons people like taking pills (or chewing gum, as the case may be).
To that end, non-combustible methods of nicotine might give the benefits without the addiction negatives (but still risks of e.g. pancreatic cancer)
For some of us this is massively understating the case.
[I accept the risks] [Go back to safety]
I want there to be a choice ( just like with cigarettes ) and I just hope it will somehow become less popular for one reason or another. Right now.. the only thing that changes is the app name. Anecdotally, my wife's cousin proudly proclaimed she does not use FB, but only Insta and TikTok. I was happily buzzed at that point and I did not want to start an argument so I just took another shot.
edit: typos
I agree. To be more nuanced, I think I want it to be a deliberate choice. Something someone stopped, thought about and said "yes, I want to do this". Because, they have made the tradeoff for themselves.
The issue for me is that it's ubiquitous. When something is ubiquitous it becomes the default. I am privileged enough to function outside of social media. But for most, I think it's basically a requisite to function in society.
I think there's something more fundamental to it, though. I'm pretty sure the same mechanisms hold here on HN and on web forums and that its inherent in asynchronous online social fora.
Other commenters so far seem to be overlooking this. I can't imagine any regulation that would address the root cause of the problem without completely destroying the good aspects of the web and the internet.
Fundamentally we as individuals need to learn how to engage in a healthy way and be self-aware.
<< Other commenters so far seem to be overlooking this.
I honestly question that assertion. I would venture to say that most people here are well aware of how social media operates and how general population responds to it.
<< I can't imagine any regulation that would address the root cause of the problem without completely destroying the good aspects of the web and the internet.
This is admittedly the hard part, but I can absolutely imagine appropriate regulation should social media get to the point it is actually destructive to the fabric of society. I am willing to sacrifice some of the internet for it too given how much of a cesspool it has become.
It may not be the time yet, but I suppose the weird geopolitical constellation now may actually provide a conduit for just such change. I am not celebrating, because as always, it will likely be the worst of both worlds.
<< Fundamentally we as individuals need to learn how to engage in a healthy way and be self-aware.
Yes, but ideally without making an attempt to go viral in the process. I would argue this is not a healthy way to do this.
Reading this, I'd even rephrase it stronger:
I can't imagine any regulation that would address the root cause of the problem without violating fundamental human rights of private correspondence and access to general computation.
There is certainly room for potentially appropriate regulation of the cesspools of today and the adtech-surveillance-engagement machinery can go die but let's not open up for scenarios where it becomes legally unfeasible to run a phpBB instance for a community (yes, you can have addiction of those exacerbating depression as well).
> Yes, but ideally without making an attempt to go viral in the process. I would argue this is not a healthy way to do this.
Fo sho.
It is a fascinating question and I am officially now just engaging in a hypothetical. I want to keep it US-centric for now. Flying and driving in US was deemed a privilege and not a right despite very clearly making citizen's life either very difficult ( with not being able to fly ) or downright impossible in some locales ( based on how US is driver centric ).
What makes internet so different from driving that would likely result in a different legal categorization?
If there was an amendment about freedom of road/air travel, then those would no longer be "privileges"
I used Facebook to find a local running group and added Facebook friends from my city for the first time in 17 years of living here.
So for me, Facebook was a way to get out of depression.
I have a "slap you in the Facebook" rule. If you didn't get an opportunity to smack someone in the face in the last 365 days, you probably shouldn't follow them on Facebook.